Advantages of using Social Media for Small Business
Social media is an inexpensive and efficient way of advertising products and services. Social networking sites are a platform for small business to grow and make their mark on the market. There are lots of advantages of social media. Top nine advantages are listed below.

You can have a website or a blog for small business
It gives an opportunity to have your own space on social networking websites where you can be in contact with your customers and prospects.

Huge Exposure to Potential Customers
Social media provide an opportunity of exposure to its potential customers. There are numbers of famous websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Myspace. These sites have more than a billion users. A small business is able to get huge traffic because of these websites.

Marketing without Money
Once you have got your desired target customers and prospect its time to market your business. Online business is different from other businesses because you do not have to spend anything on it not even a penny.

Customers will find you
Small business should work on generating good contents following with keywords and phrases. Try to write articles and put them on different search engines with a link of your website and so when your customers will read your article he will follow you on your website.

Contacts around the world
There are numbers of different people living in different geographical locations but they all are connected to your business because of social media.

Innovative ideas
Small business can create original ideas. People connected to your business belong to different culture, religion or nationality. While catering their needs you can create ideas to make better connections with them.

Fan Following
If your business is able to cater its customer’s needs, then your business can have a huge list of fans. They will follow you on your website and will be willing to buy your products.

Opportunity of feedback
Your customers can tell you about your company. They can give you suggestions which in return will help your business to improve.

Profit and Sales
Small business online can generate hefty amount of profit. Sales increase with the passage of time. Online business does not require you to invest lots of money in it. What it needs is time and effort to make your business.

It doesn’t matter if you have the greatest product or service on the planet. Or even the universe. You could have the cure to AIDS, or the solution to world hunger or poverty. But just because you have it, does not mean that people automatically know that you have it.

You have to get your name out there, you have to get your product or service out there. There are several different ways you can do this. But gone are the days where you can just post a in the local newspaper and get the word out to the entire town. A more creative measure is needed in today’s world.

First

This means that you’re going to have to get a website and a Facebook page. Domain names are extremely inexpensive today. Only 9.99 for a.com domain name.

When people are searching for a product or a solution, and they come across just a phone number listed on a directory with no website. It is a complete turnoff for potential customers.

The websites are also extremely easy to design now a days, especially if you choose a WordPress blog, then you have thousands of themes available at your disposal. Most of these are drag and drop to design.

Second

The next great thing is a Facebook page. It is completely free and you immediately have access to 100s of millions of people. There are also tons of free apps that you can use to customize your page and bring more value to your customers.

Third

You have to analyze your business. The best way to do this is to learn from other businesses mistakes.

Here are the top 6 reasons businesses fail:

Not Learning Enough About The Market

Not A Detailed Business Plan

Too Little Or Poor Financing

Bad Location, Bad Internet Usage, Bad Marketing

Not Shifting With The Market

Expanding Too Quickly Beyond Your Capability

So you need to take a quick look at your business. Hopefully you learned about the first three before you started your business. But we covered the last 2 in the 4th step already.

But one thing you need to realize that the customers are in control of what they demand. Just because something worked before, doesn’t mean its always going to work. Take the case of newspaper ads. That may have worked in the past, but if that is your main source of marketing today, you’re going to fail.

One of the biggest advantages of small business is that they can move at lightning speed, but only if they realize that. Many small businesses throw away this advantage and hesitate due to the risks that they perceive. Some of these risks maybe real, but often they are merely fear (F-E-A-R = False Expectations Appearing Real).

What small businesses may not comprehend is that they can quickly recover from a mistake and move on, taking what they have learned with them, thus, doubling their chances for success next time they try something similar.

It is this type of tinkering with their business models, products, services and marketing that often allows them to “get lucky.” (Luck = when opportunity meets preparedness). A small business that tries new things and is constantly innovating will find themselves able to adapt quickly when a customer requests something out of the ordinary.

This is because each time they try new things they learn their limits, abilities and of new possibilities as well. Small businesses have a huge advantage, because they are agile and without bureaucracy, thus, they can easily outpace their corporate competitors in their niches.

In fact, it is usually the small businesses that do most of the innovation and the corporations that buy these ideas, small businesses or copy what they are doing. Why do they steal and copy ideas? Well, because they work.

A smart corporation will try to be innovative and to their credit they do come up with some cool innovations in the market place, but certainly not the majority of the ideas or concepts, especially the ones that really change the industry. So, please consider this.